As tensions escalate and bombs fall across the Middle East, President Biden’s emissaries continue to urge all parties to calm down and dial back the violence. No one is listening, and this brings us to the central paradox of a troubled presidency stumbling toward an inglorious close. Mr. Biden may love diplomacy, but diplomacy doesn’t love him back.
No administration in American history has been as committed to Middle East diplomacy as this one. Yet have an administration’s diplomats ever had less success? Mr. Biden tried and failed to get Iran back into a nuclear agreement with the U.S. He tried and failed to get a new Israeli-Palestinian dialogue on track. He tried and failed to stop the civil war in Sudan. He tried and failed to get Saudi Arabia to open formal diplomatic relations with Israel. He tried to settle the war in Yemen through diplomacy, and when that failed and the Houthis began attacking shipping in the Red Sea, the ever-undaunted president sought a diplomatic solution to that problem too. He failed again.
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